I am confused about the proper way to organize around the ITIL framework. It seems like I should create Service Delivery and Support groups for each function (i.e. config managment, incident management, ect.)

However the ITIL infrastructure management proposes an IT organization organized around design and planning, deployment, operations, and technical support.

Do you group your IT staff by Service Management or Infrastructure, or both?

I would try not to be to caught up with defining the organization round the ITIL framework.

As an example, as a infrastructure analyst and designer, my workday may consist on taking on a role in both Incident, problem, change as well as my primary focus is on design & planning and deployment.

You will always have this type of people in your organization. If you try to put them in a "box", you will only reduce their efficiancy. However, that said, these are the people that really need a sound understanding in how ITIL affects and already exist in their everyday work.

On the other hand, you might have people that typically work in a end-user support role all day. Classic Incident management role. However, even these people might be called upon to work in an other role.

In regards to ITIL, locate all the good practises & common sense that already exist in your organization, then implement ITIL based on that.

"ITIL is at a high level for one very good reason, it needs to be interpruted for your specific business, needs and goals. Use the experience you've gained and please please use common sense, in the end that is what makes the difference!"(Ken Turbitt)

Remember, this "common sense" is situated between the ears of your so called "techies", so have them be a part of designing the ITIL processes in your organization.

The ICTIM processes, are in my experiense processes most companies forget when talking about ITIL.

Again, in my experience, due to mainly three things.
1. The ITIL foundation course and certifications do not mention them(a lot)
2. ICTIM is "techie" stuff, that makes sense to anyone experienced with IT Operational tasks, Projects, Design & deployment. But not that much sense to people only able to read process diagrams.
However, as specified in the ITSMF best practices for ICTIM, this is the core of all other ITIL processes.
3. For some reason the ITIL consultancy firms in my region does not mention them at all to management.. Or try to sell in a ITIL based/Modified framework such as MOF or HP ITSM referance. And these frameworks have changed the focus/basis away from ICTIM(HP is worse)

As to your original question, now that i'm finished rambeling:)

The organizations i've been in, that have implemented the ITIL framework, have not reorganized due to ITIL, because the organization was already organized by "common sense", and hence is fully "ITIL compliant", to use a very stupid frase.

If you create Service Delivery and support group for each function then you are not only defeating purpose of ITIL framework but also adding extra burden to your infrastructure.
You are right in saying that Infrastructure goes with design and planning, deployment, operations, and technical support. Service management processes support these functions and interface with all of them.
The aim of process based organization to eliminate various point of contact for a single task. There would be one Service desk which will record all the user requests and one Incident Management group whose responsibility is to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

How do you organize the group, depends on existing functions of your organization but each process (Incident, Change, Configuration etc.) will go across the functions. So, there would be one Incident manger but in the Incident management group you will be having people from various functions. These people will have their reporting to respective function leads but will solve the incidents of their expertise area.

Similarly there would be one Change management group who will interface between developers and deployment group but will be responsible for change management activities of all the functions and so on so forth.

Thank you for your inputs. Do your companies have a Service Level Management group of individuals that do nothing but manage SLAs? Is there a Problem manager who uses a staff to investigate problems? Do these same people belong to a Technical Support staff or an Operations staff?

I think the difference between Service Support/Delivery and ICT Infrastrucutre is Service Support/Delivery work the Service Mangament processes/functions while the Infrastructure folks implement the technical solutions to the services. I see overlap in the Tech Support and Incident management but not between Availability, Capacity, Change management and the Infrastructure guys. What do you think?

In an organization there may be various levels of SLA and UCs. Like a customer is asking for certain application so there would be SLA to design and develop and also after implementation support. After implementation there would be SLA for availability etc.

ITIL does not say that you should have an exclusive individual (or team for that purpose) for each process. It all depends on the size of organization and their setup. In a huge organization where no. of incidents are in thousands per day, I would say, yes they not only need a problem manager but also a strong team of problem management. Now this problem management team not necessarily be expert on certain domain but can seek help or form temporary team of SMEs to solve particular problem. Again, this is a process, so it does not limit to one particular function and they do not belong to Technical Support staff or an Operations staff.

ITIL is about service management in the infrastructure. Availability and Capacity management are integral part of infrastructure. If we talk of capacity, of what we measure the capacity? Of a server, of network bandwidth…then what makes infrastructure….servers, networks. Similarly SLAs go against for availability of these services. Change management manages changes in these CIs. I do not see any separation in these.